Fleurette Africaine
by the fuzz
Summary: The Bebop crew vows to apprehend one last bounty in memory of their fallen comrade; but is there any man worthy of the honor? Chap.2!
1. In a Sentimental Mood

Disclaimer I own Cowboy Bebop.  
Honest-to-God-Disclaimer I don't. A/N In following the story the observant may find that all session titles are jazz compositions – parallels between the song and chapter content are loosely existent if at all. 

Summary The Bebop crew vows to apprehend one last bounty in memory of their fallen comrade; but is there any man worthy of the honor?

Fleurette Africaine 

Session 1

In a Sentimental Mood 

The beauty and serenity of the Martian sunset did not cease to enthrall her. Like the pages of a child's flipbook, Faye's sketched memories turned page after page behind her eyes, all of them a whirl and a blur of color and harsh emotion. She remembered the rising and setting of the sun on her home planet vividly. The dangerous Martian splash of blood across a yellow, dirtied horizon was more beautiful in its juxtaposition with the tar-black bay than the soft, pastel sunsets over the denim blue ponds of Singapore. Had she always thought this? She watched her arms turn white and pinprick goose-bumps bubble

This new world was not like the one she left; it was not the childhood in which all good things stretched to eternity like the elongated clouds somewhere between the horizon and just beyond it. What better indication of the end of the next chapter of her life as the death of Spike Spiegel? In some ways she was more the child than Ed, more unwilling to embrace the closure of one adventure and welcome the next.

The sea breeze was cool, and every so often a harsh, hollow gust would bite at Faye's fingertips. They shook as she lit her cigarette, the artificial flame of the lighter sheltered by the palm of one manicured hand. They were vibrant apple and immaculate. God bless her gloves; she'd miss the security she felt when she wore them. Four days ago, when Jet and her had flown halfway to the Syndicate building – and thinking better of themselves had turned back via some great, silent agreement – Faye had lost them. They were refueling their respective crafts at a way station in the barren outskirts of the Martian city when she saw a man in a suit, no doubt a syndicate thug, pull aside a frail looking old man and push him against the wall. He wanted money. Or drugs. Something. Faye had stepped close to him and punched him once in the face, and then with a surge of subconscious violence shot him in the temple.

The sound of hard metal boots on cold steel was muffled by the blunt openness of the harbor, but she heard him come up behind her. He had a rag in one hand and began to absently shine the railing of the deck. Two circles, one horizontal line, one vertical, a cross inside a sphere, and repeat, first the far left rung, and then the next to the right, and the next.

"Jet," she said through a cigarette, her face outwardly impassive but minutely alight with anger, mischief, and sexuality, the parts of Faye that shadowed her in whatever it was that she was doing or saying. "It's been good."

"What?" Gruff, reedy baritone, like an old man who spoke through the mouth of a someone much younger in body, and though balding and fatherly, Jet was young, perhaps not young enough to start over but young enough to move on.

"I had a good time, I said." Smoke spilt like lace out of the burning cylinder at her mouth, roll after roll of the delicate milky stuff, grayed by exposure to smog and contaminates.

"At my expense."

Faye coughed. "Trust an old, grumpy man to be unsympathetic."

"Shrew woman." His mouth was set in a line as he cleaned, but the ghostly edges of a smile cowered in the dips and crevices that were what she might have called in an older man wrinkles. Jet possessed only scars of experience.

"I'm leaving."

Jet said nothing for a long time. He stole a glance at the Martian sky and looked down again, quickly, afraid that if he looked for too long the memory would implant itself where the image of Spike was already fading; the lines and contours of the younger man's face dulled and tumbled into each other even now. Faye studied the hot embers at the end of her cigarette.

"When?" Jet said presently.

"Later tonight." Faye had left a hundred times and had returned twice as many, noticeably more irritable and with considerably less money. But there was a certain finality to this new departure, a finality that steamed in the cold air with a fiery sense of closure.

The dull hills of waves pushed weakly against the hull of the old ship, surging forwards and then ricocheting backwards, like a rubber bullet striking steel.

_Take care of yourself, cowgirl. _

A/N I absolutely adore reviews, so please, please do leave me a note...


	2. Night in Tunisia

Session 2

Night in Tunisia

ACT 1

Space swallowed one whole like a toothless, gaping mouth, breathless save for the slow pulse of stars. Two stately pillars - a ruined, cold reminder of a distant era - marked the entrance to the stretch of space that housed a planet fossilized in a century that had come and gone quietly in all other avenues of the solar system. It - Earth - was the enzyme that sheltered its substrates and facilitated the beginning of the end: the end of her first life, and, now, the end of her second.

Faye accelerated and passed into the hyperspace gate, stifling the terror that snaked its way from the pit of her stomach to her lips, terror induced by the sensation of being consumed by some great beast. Galaxies stretched out on either side of the monster's throat, and it vomited her out at the feet of a blue ball, the broken surface of which was characterized with deep brown stains, scars left by the impact of hurtling fire-rocks.

For a moment she was unable to breathe, her head dizzy and tight with apprehension. A lifetime ago space travel had frightened her, and she thought then that if only her fragmented memory would allow her to know the source of her fear she would not longer be debilitated by it. The fear had dulled with time, but in the wake of her newfound memory it had returned with a horrible vengeance, and she knew now this fear was nothing imagined:

behind her eyes space opened up like a head being bashed against concrete, spilling light like blood and innards.

Faye clutched the controls, worn smooth by use; they were cold now, without warm gloves between them and her skin. The imaginary current of a spherical river forced her downstream, the pull of which was so slight that it went unnoticed, and quite suddenly she was in a place made only unfamiliar by the passage of time.

Her communicator thrummed with electricity and static in response to a long abandoned security station. She ignored it.

ACT 2

"Macintime!"

"Macintyre, sir."

Appleberry smiled broadly and clapped Macintyre on one shoulder, leaving a dark print of dirt and grime on the pink cotton of the slighter man's neatly pressed button-down. The latter grimaced. "Terribly sorry, Macinwoot!" Appleberry boomed. "Would you like an egg?"

"I'm allergic." Macintyre said, his voice dry.

"Macinwoot! Woot, hoot, Macinwoot!"

Appleberry's daughter spoke little and, if Macintyre was not mistaken, often hid behind a veneer of concentration, beneath which he suspected was a chasm of idleness. It had only been in the past few weeks that Macintyre had observed the beginnings of a transformation in her, as if she was regressing to some wild state.

Edward hooted like an owl in Macintyre's ear. He started.

"Gosh, Francois, be a little more considerate, would you?"

"Right-o, Mac-person!" Macintyre! It was a wonder he hadn't forgotten his own name. 'Mac-person', however, exuded some odd appeal. "Also, Edward wants Mac-person to know that she is not Francois. Ed is Ed." There was a seriousness to this he was not accustomed to hearing.

"Sure, Ed." Edward smiled and nodded vigorously, and whispered, very quietly, as if relating some great secret,

"Mac-person has earned the respect of many elephants."

Ed and her father existed, he concluded, on a separate plane of reality than normal beings. It was good that his work paid well. He frowned, realizing that his apprenticeship paid nothing for sixth time that afternoon. The fact continually astounded him.

ACT 2 and 1/2

A chilling Earthen night descended on the stretch of barren rock the trio had chosen for a campsite. Tough grasses and moss wormed to the surface of shallow pockets in the rock's face. Macintyre squatted near a boulder, perhaps once a falling star, and watched Edward work. She swayed and chanted with a new, energetic and almost mischievous vigor.

Appleberry collapsed beside Macintyre and encompassed the vast openness before them with a sweep of one gigantic palm. "It really is exciting work that we do, Macintosh. We're explorers, is what we are, real ones, not fools on the fringes of space - the greatest discoveries are made closest to home, my father always told me. Egg?"

After a moment Macintyre said,

"Have you noticed how differently Francois has been acting lately? It's as if she's up to something, if you know what I mean." Appleberry smiled obliviously and reassuringly.

"I didn't raise my girl to be the type to find trouble." Appleberry clapped Macintyre on the shoulder and lumbered to the shelter they had erected. Macintyre did not follow. He contemplated the boulder behind him, asked himself how many light years it had traveled to fall in a heap of rubble on this broken planet, and for how many thousands or millions of years it had journeyed. His thoughts turned to his work: tomorrow morning they would rise and fruitlessly map a new expanse of rock, only to return weeks or days or hours later and find that the living landscape had been destroyed or changed to such an extent that it was no longer recognizable.

ACT 3

Faye laid one cheek down on a chilled block of white marble. The frigidness of the evening made her eyes burn and her breath turn to a smoky cloud. Beside her lay the disembodied head of a lion, its fountain mouth a small 'O', now dry and cracked, and its marble eroded by exposure to the elements. It was very different from the beast she recalled from her youth, a stately, muscular thing that spat sparkling spring water beneath a heavy, bright moon. Adults in black gowns and suits danced behind beaded, silver masquerade costumes and drank red wine from translucent glasses.

She felt pressure behind her eyes but did not cry. Why did she come back to this empty place; what did she expect to find?

Her dreams were confused, a jumble of syndicate men in suits, triggers pulled, blood pooling on tile, and things left unfinished.

A/N A slightly longer, more eventful chapter. Revised. Session one has also been revised, if anyone is remotely interested.

Thank you M., rouge night , PerfectGrammar and jadedghostgurl. I hope you guys have read and enjoyed this chapter, too!


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